A collaboration between two of the biggest franchises in gaming, Fortnite and Minecraft, has been long-requested. Today, collaboration rumours have started.

Fortnite and Minecraft have become household names, and despite both franchises’ meteoric rise to prominence (and multitude of crossover events for both), they have never collaborated before. New rumours hit the Fortnite feed almost daily, and it’s about time the Mojang juggernaut Minecraft, has entered the picture. A new rumour indicates that Battle Island could be accepting new entrants with Minecraft, in what would be one of their biggest crossover events to date (this is the company that has thrown an Eminem concert in-game).

MINECRAFT x FORTNITE IS *RUMORED* TO BE IN EARLY DEVELOPMENT

[VIA @AdiraFNInfo] pic.twitter.com/myLzSGcEBf

— HYPEX (@HYPEX) January 14, 2026

The information about the potential Minecraft crossover being in early development comes from an X user (formerly Twitter), AdiraFNInfo, then reposted by the reliable Fortnite leaker HYPEX (which lent ‘credibility’ to the leak). HYPEX’s post has ‘rumoured’ emblazoned across the post, so even that account hasn’t been able to confirm if this rumour is true or not. It’s worth noting that alongside other prominent Fortnite leakers like ShiinaBR (who echoed the Minecraft rumours in their own post) on X (who has been responsible for some of the most accurate ‘leaks’ coming to Fortnite), HYPEX has “Epic Games Partner” in their bio, alongside a blue checkmark for verification.

The next confirmed season scheduled to hit Battle Island will be Chapter 7, Season 2, following the current Pacific Break season, which has been steeped in Hollywood and Tarantino additions to the Item Shop. As of these rumours, nothing has been confirmed as concrete regarding the next season. Although both accounts have been responsible for accurate leaks before, fans should take this news with a grain of salt until the collaboration is confirmed by Mojang Studios or Epic Games. Both parties will undoubtedly have a huge announcement if it’s indeed going down.

The top five games played on the PlayStation in 2025 by US players were exactly the same as in 2024, according to Circana's Player Engagement Tracker.

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Any studio looking to release a new live service game in 2026 needs to take a long hard look at what the most played games in the US were last year.

The start of a new year should instil everyone with a sense of anticipation and the thought of new possibilities. But for the games industry at least, the last few years have brought more worries than excitement.

As we laid out in our end of year review, 2025 belonged to indie studios, thanks to successes like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and Hollow Knight: Silksong. And in an ideal world, larger publishers would learn a thing or two from these smaller developers.

At the very least, it’d be nice to see publishers stop pinning all their hopes on live service games and becoming the next Fortnite, because it’s simply not going to happen. If you need further evidence of that, just take a look at what most people in the US were playing last year.

Circana analyst Mat Piscatella took to Bluesky to share the top five most played video games in the US, on both PlayStation and Xbox consoles, according to a survey of ‘active’ gamers.

On PlayStation, the top five were Fortnite, Call Of Duty, GTA 5, Minecraft, and Roblox. And on Xbox, it’s the exact same list, with the only difference being Roblox and Minecraft’s positions are swapped.

These are all long-running games with a heavy emphasis on multiplayer and have been consistently updated over the years – with only Call Of Duty being a traditional yearly release.

What’s especially telling is that, according to Piscatella, these lists are unchanged compared to 2024. The order’s slightly different for Xbox, but it’s still the same five games.

2025's top 5 most played games on US Xbox ranked by % of active panel that played:1 – Fortnite2 – Call of Duty3 – GTAV4 – Minecraft5 – RobloxSame list for 2024:1 – Call of Duty2 – Fortnite3 – Minecraft4 – GTAV5 – RobloxSource: Circana Player Engagement Tracker

— Mat Piscatella (@matpiscatella.bsky.social) 2026-01-06T15:20:42.099Z

Fortnite is the youngest of the bunch, having launched in 2017, which means no other games, live service ones or otherwise, have managed to come close to this list’s level of popularity in the last eight years.

Knowing this, it’s hard to imagine things being any different this time next year. Call Of Duty may drop a couple of places thanks to Black Ops 7, which only launched two months ago and has been a relative flop, at least by the series’ standards.

While there are no public figures on console, SteamDB’s data shows Call Of Duty has been bleeding players for years on PC, with even 2024’s well received Black Ops 6 bucking the trend.

Battlefield 6 and Arc Raiders may be the go-to multiplayer shooters for the moment but Call Of Duty clearly has a tight stranglehold on the gaming community when it’s still among the most played games in the US despite its online reputation.

This knowledge should be a turn-off for any studio hoping to break into the live service games market, but comments from Ubisoft suggest it’s unperturbed (even after multiple failures) and the big closure of The Game Awards 2025 was a new live service shooter from the Apex Legends creators called Highguard, that’s set to launch later this month.

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Minecraft has just unveiled some of the first features coming to its next game drop, and it's made me all warm and gooey inside. Clearly wanting to start 2026 by tackling the most important tasks first, Mojang has revealed an overhaul for several baby mobs in order to make them way cuter - the perfect prioritization for one of the biggest and best PC games on the planet, if you ask me. With new textures, models, and audio, if you thought Minecraft's kittens, piglets, and chicks were adorable before, you're simply not prepared for how they look now.

Read the full story on PCGamesN: Minecraft unveils new models for baby mobs, making them "chunkier, floofier, and more charming than ever"

Despite seeming close to death just a couple of months ago, we're now just days away from Hytale arriving in very early access. There's been huge buzz around the Minecraft rival for years, but since being prised from the clutches of Riot Games, the hype has reached new levels. Despite its art style, I've always been struck by how beautiful Hytale looks, but apparently, it'll look even better soon - and things will get much easier when it comes to creating and editing your own cubic kingdoms. V2 of Hytale's world generation system will "redefine the block-game genre," according to Hypixel Studios' top dog - and although it'll launch with V1, it'll offer you small glimpses of V2 worlds.

Read the full story on PCGamesN: Watch out Minecraft, Hytale says its new world generation system will "redefine the block game genre"

All Minecraft mobs are pretty adorable on their own, but the baby variants are especially cute. With the first major update of 2026, Mojang is reworking some of the most common creatures with new baby mob forms.

Exploring any Minecraft world is so much better with some cute companions who can adventure at your side or be waiting for you at your base when you return. You might be unsure which creatures actually have unique variants, though, and what needs to be done to meet them, so here are all baby mobs and how to find them in Minecraft.

Today we’re continuing our traditional countdown of MassivelyOP’s weirdest MMORPG stories of the year, that year being 2025! Coming in at #2 on our list is… Roblox’s Grow A Garden When I first heard about the viral hit Roblox MMO called Grow A Garden, I was full of snark. I mean, gardening and farming games […]

Minecraft's getting marginally cuter with its next update, as it continues to pretend it isn't designed for the express purpose of teaching innocent children that in order to survive, you've sometimes got to beat some pigs and trees to death with your bare hands. Baby farm animal mobs, long just mini-mes of their adult versions with slightly different head/body size ratios are getting their own unique appearances.

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A new game purporting to be an MMORPG popped up on Steam this week: It’s called Dark Craft, it’s by Kazakh outfit Take Top Entertainment, and it pretty much looks like what would happen if you merged Dark Souls and Minecraft into an angsty squishmallow. “Dark Craft is the first MMORPG in the Souls-like genre!” […]

Minecraft’s final update of the year is getting close, and it’s easily one of the biggest ones yet. The Mounts of Mayhem drop is introducing loads of new ways to ride around, plus plenty of chaos to go with it.

If you’re eager to start exploring everything the final drop of 2025 has to offer, you’ll likely want to know when you can expect to start playing. Here’s when the Mounts of Mayhem update will be released for Minecraft.

With younger gamers increasingly only playing free-to-play games like Fortnite a reader argues that parents should introduce them to a wider range of options.

There has been a lot of stories lately about how people are no longer buying as many new games as they used to and most are still playing games that are five years older or more. Most of these are free-to-play games like Fortnite and Minecraft and while it’s a thing that seems to be affecting everyone (because who doesn’t want free games?) it’s most common with younger gamers.

We had that terrible story this week, that said that most children would rather have in-game currency, to speed on cosmetics, than anything physical for Christmas and that is just sad to me. I’m not looking to spoil anyone’s fun, you like what you like, but I have a very hard time believing these same kids wouldn’t enjoy proper games just as much, if only they were exposed to them more.

I’ve got nothing against Fortnite, or whatever, but only playing that game, for years and years? While knowing there’s a whole world of other, completely different, games out there as well. It seems like a literal hell to me. But maybe they don’t actually know about the other games, or if they do they’re not in a position to really come across them.

The price of triple-A games increasing to £70 is bad news for everyone, but just imagine being a young kid, or even a student, and you’re faced with that kind of price tag. Try and keep up with the yearly Call Of Duty or EA Sports FC and you’d be out of money in one go.

I think this is one of the things driving the popularity of indie games at the moment, because they’re usually relatively cheap and very imaginative (if they’re not yet another roguelike or Metroidvania). But as good as indie games are they’re not everything that video games can be, and it’s very hard to find the good ones if you don’t know what you’re looking for – which someone who plays nothing but Fortnite probably won’t.

Games take so long to make nowadays that if they have a gap or just aren’t very good for a game or two, they can easily fall out of the pop culture consciousness. Halo got announced for PlayStation 5 recently and there were genuine questions about whether younger gamers even knew what Halo is – and I feel there’s a lot of games in a similar situation to that at the moment.

If that keeps happening, then not only will younger people never know of such games but their lack of interest and support will mean those games don’t get made anymore and then it literally will be nothing but Fortnite and free-to-play games.

We’re at a point in history now where everyone has grown up with video games. They might not have ever been interested in them, but every parent today has played a video game and knows what they are – which is not how things were a few decades ago.

We’re also at a point where phones and tablets are being used as free babysitters to keep kids quiet and it ends up being all they know in terms of playing games (or watching movies, which is also worse on a phone compared to basically every other option). But a parent can introduce them to age appropriate titles, Nintendo at first but also things like the Lego games and Ratchet & Clank, depending on what formats you own.

Most kids are going to be experiencing the same thing so they’re not going to learn about the full breadth of gaming from each other and not from anywhere else really, unless they happen to come across the right kind of YouTubers. I think it’s only right that a parent doesn’t just leave it up to chance and tries to show them everything, to see what they’ll like.

It’s not a question of trying to push your likes onto your kids, as this already happens with music and movies, where parents expose their kids to what they like, intentionally or not. But with games I think it’s a bit different, there’s far less games appropriate for a young age so you have to make the effort to seek them out – it’s not like you should be showing your six-year-old Silent Hill 2.

Personally, I think it’s just good parenting. I often find the people who are not really into music or movies, and just go along with what’s popular, never really got a grounding in either from their parents. Specifically, I remember a colleague who knew almost nothing about music, to the point where it came across as weird, and he told me that his parents never really had records or the radio on in the house.

Parents have to give their children a head start with many things in life and I think art is part of that, and that definitely includes video games.

By reader Soldat

The reader’s features do not necessarily represent the views of GameCentral or Metro.

You can submit your own 500 to 600-word reader feature at any time, which if used will be published in the next appropriate weekend slot. Just contact us at gamecentral@metro.co.uk or use our Submit Stuff page and you won’t need to send an email.

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MORE: Tomb Raider has been treated worse than any other video game franchise - Reader's Feature

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People always find ways to challenge themselves in games, whether the developers intended it or not. I've Nuzlocked more Pokémon games than I've done regular playthroughs by this point, and I don't show any signs of slowing down. Minecraft players also love to make things harder for themselves. Where some people actively seek out the best Minecraft seeds to give them a head start, others embark on challenge runs or try to walk to the end of the procedurally-generated landscape - it took him 14 years, by the way.

Read the full story on PCGamesN: You've seen Doom on a fridge, now here's Minecraft running at 0.5fps on a device you'd never expect

What are the best Minecraft tower ideas? While houses may seem like the ideal way to showcase your Minecraft skills, and a Minecraft treehouse is a wonderful accomplishment, there's something to be said about putting together a tower that reaches into the heavens. It's going to take a lot of time and energy, but boy, are the results worth it when you're quite literally towering over your world. The freedom to make whatever you want makes Minecraft one of the best PC games. These juggernauts are intricately detailed, fully climbable, and sure to keep you safe from the most dangerous Minecraft mobs. Between massive gothic spires, fantasy turrets, and everything in between, we've put together a list of some of our favorite Minecraft towers - which should be just enough to send your imagination sky-high in the survival game.

Read the full story on PCGamesN: Best Minecraft tower ideas for 1.21.10 - top 16 tower designs

Minecraft has reigned supreme over a niche genre that it essentially made. It drew the lines in its own sand and stayed there for over a decade, with no one being the wiser. But now, with a game rising from the ashes like a phoenix, Minecraft could finally get some real competition.

Enter: Hytale, the game Riot Games purchased, killed, and then sold back to its original owners. It has gone through a decade of ups and downs, five years at Riot Games, and is now in the hands of those who initially created it. And in this entire decade, it's never been closer to release than it is now, or so says Simon Collins-Laflamme, the creator of Hypixel and Hytale, who is now leading development.

From videos released by Hypixel over the past few days, we can determine that Hytale is not fooling around. It has significantly expanded combat, movement, and mechanics over Minecraft, and appears to be an overall upgraded and modernized version of Notch's masterpiece. And that tracks with Hytale itself evolving out of Minecraft, first as the wildly popular Hypixel server, and now as a standalone game.

Though many thought the game would never see the light of day after entering a state of limbo while handled by Riot Games, Hytale now has a real chance to shake up the foundations laid by Minecraft for, well, itself. It has been the sole game in this niche voxel-based survival crafting genre and, while there have been notable attempts at taking over some of its market share, it's remained a dominant force in gaming for well over a decade.

A prominent example is A Vintage Story, which takes liberal inspiration from Minecraft, but makes the game much more challenging and focused on the survival aspect, complicating everything that was streamlined in the latter. Of course, this adds loads of depth and mechanical intricacy to the game, but it does largely alienate a more casual, laid-back, and, most importantly, young audience.

With over 230 million copies sold across basically every imaginable platform, Minecraft is also the best-selling game of all time, which is a title hardly any game will be able to beat.

But Hytale stands to shift the tides.

Naturally, I do not expect (nor should anyone, really) that Hytale will dethrone Minecraft. The latter has become somewhat of a cultural cornerstone in gaming and a title on which many of us have been brought up. Everyone and their dad had a squad of friends way back when making a new survival server, playing until they got bored, and leaving the game for a year before repeating the process. It's a shrine, a temple we all go back to every once in a while to reminisce about the good old days.

But what Hytale can do is provide an alternative. A better, more complex, more detailed, and more, well, fun experience that takes what Minecraft has done and ups the ante in every imaginable way.

By inviting the community to pitch ideas and help develop them, Hypixel is also involving the players on a scale never seen in Minecraft, and the low $19.99 price, alongside no charges for servers for at least two years, will substantially expand the community side of things and speed up Hytale's establishment as the go-to co-op survival crafting game.

This is an uphill battle, and it remains to be seen how Hytale will go about it. What I'm sure of is that, based on just how popular the game already is without even being released, the market, and this niche Minecraft-adjacent genre, are in for an earthquake.

And, as always, that can only lead to good things for the player. More competition means more development, innovation, and progress, and God knows Minecraft needs all of that.

The post Minecraft might finally get the competitor the industry so desperately needs appeared first on Destructoid.